The Story Behind It
by Starfire201
Summary: After receiving an old picture from a friend, Wonder Woman ponders the aftermath of her leaving Themyscira, the lessons she learned, and how they shaped her. Contains minor spoilers for movie.


**A/N** : Went to see Wonder Woman just recently, and this story came into my head. Please keep in mind this is my first (and probably only) time writing for this fandom, so any mistakes will be my own. Just a short piece, but hopefully, it will pass muster.

First two lines are quoted from the movie.

* * *

 _"It was your heritage, expected by your mother, your sisters, your fellow heroes, even those who had merely dreamed of you. I have witnessed the power of your adversary. Expectations will_ _ **not**_ _be enough."_ \- Dr. Psycho to Diana, _The All-New Wonder Woman_ (issue 609, May 2011 - The Odyssey, part Nine)

* * *

 _"Found the original._  
 _Maybe one day you'll tell me the story behind it."_

Diana Prince put the note down and gazed at the photo plate, taken nearly a century ago by a photographer in a town called Veld, a place in a land she'd later learned was called Belgium. The picture containing her and four other people, one she'd thought lost long before.

 _The story behind it..._

Her fingers drifted thoughtfully over each of the others in the picture: _Charlie...Sammy...Chief..._

 _Steve..._

Her gaze turned towards the window, as her thoughts drifted to the past, and the day she'd left Themyscira to journey to the world of men, to find Ares and kill him before he destroyed the world and Zeus's creations in a "War to End All Wars".

She had been very naïve back then, believing that her education had taught her all she needed to know about the world beyond Paradise Island. Even with her mother's warnings, she'd felt she was doing something honorable, and that those in the outside world would behave just as honorably.

She soon found out how wrong she'd been.

At first, she'd tried to ignore the darker aspects of the new world she was in, focusing only on her task of finding and destroying Ares with the weapons she'd brought with her, but once the men in the government refused to do anything as it would endanger their attempts to make peace, she'd started to see that things were different from what she'd believed.

Even so, it had taken her some time to understand that mortals didn't always act for the greater good, or for others beyond themselves. Sammy and Chief both told her stories that indicated as such. Diana had had cause to doubt them at first, Sammy in particular, but when it came down to it, they'd stayed by her side and fought with her to liberate Veld and beyond. Along with Charlie, they'd shown some of the better traits of humanity, even if it hadn't seemed that way at first. The capability for change was there.

Steve had taught her the hardest lessons of all, Diana recollected. He'd been a spy for his country, doing whatever he had to in order to try and help his country win the war, no matter who he had to hurt along the way. He didn't always like what he did, but he had anyway. But at the same time, he was willing to take a risk to help her, even if he didn't fully believe that there was a more malevolent being behind the war he was fighting.

He'd also shown her what it was like to love, and in the end, that men were indeed capable of sacrificing themselves for it. Whether it was love for a person or cause, they had as much capacity for love as they did for destruction.

In those brief few days, she'd learned what Ares had not in all the millennia he'd spent walking this world in his various guises. He'd seen only that they were destructive and corrupt, nothing more or less. He'd never been able to grasp that they could be more.

But they were more than that, and Steve's death for her sake had given her the power to become the "Godkiller" and the strength she needed to defeat Ares for good, and after he was defeated, she'd seen how the soldiers had reacted, as though they were just waking up for the first time.

Her experiences had shaped her, had turned her into the person the world now called Wonder Woman. For nearly a century, she'd fought for the good parts of humanity, and never forgot the lessons she'd learned when she'd first left the Amazons on Themyscira.

She'd never returned to the island, knowing she would never be welcome there again, and sometimes it caused her pangs of grief to have left her people behind.

But she could never regret being here and helping where and when she could.

It was the job of the Amazons to protect humanity, after all.

People like Sammy, Chief, Charlie and Steve.

For the people of Veld.

For those who fought to protect their home and world.

Yes, there was a story behind this picture, and one she would never forget.

Perhaps one day, she would tell Bruce the story.

But for now, it was time to preserve this plate.

To preserve the memory of the day she'd become more than the "Godkiller"...

The day she'd become Wonder Woman.

* * *

 _"...I will always be Wonder Woman."_ \- Diana, _The All-New Wonder Woman_ (issue 614, Oct. 2011 - The Odyssey, part Fourteen)


End file.
